Synopses & Reviews
Luce Boulnois has poured a lifetime of prodigious, passionate scholarship into this seminal book. She explores the encounter between East and West across the vast continental expanse that separates the Mediterranean world from the Chinese one. She unravels in a clear and compelling way the complex threads that weave the history of great overland trade routes, which allowed the transmission of ideas and beliefs, techniques and works of art, helping to shape the civilizations that flourished along the way. She loves silk, its history, and all its paths to Europe. But the importance of Central Asia is not just a thing of the past, and the author discusses its significance in the modern world in cultural and geopolitical terms, including the implications of the most recent events taking place there.
For the armchair traveler or the adventurous trail blazer, this "pièce de résistance" of Silk Road literature is guaranteed to satisfy.
Synopsis
A sumptuous historical survey of "The Road" that also offers itineraries, practicalities, and the whereabouts of top-rated related museum collections.
About the Author
World-renowned French historian Luce Boulnois (deceased) researched Chinese and Russian archives to unravel the Silk Road's mysteries.Bradley Mayhew was born in Sevenoaks, Kent in 1970 and currently lives in Yellowstone County, Montana, USA. A degree in Oriental Studies (Chinese) at Oxford University kickstarted 20 years of independent travel in the remoter corners of Asia, and a career writing guidebooks. He is the author or co-author of Lonely Planet guides to Central Asia, Tibet, Bhutan, Nepal and many others and is a major contributor to the Insight Guide to the Silk Road. Bradley has lectured on Central Asia to the Royal Geographical Society and recently traveled across Asia in the footsteps of Marco Polo for a five-hour French-German TV documentary.